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Tuesday, February 26, 2008

IRAN, ISRAEL, AND NUCLEAR WEAPONS

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN IN THE GUARDIAN

Talk about the destruction of Israel is absolutely paranoid fantasy nonsense.

For years Israel charged Russia with anti-Semitism, and Russia has plenty of nuclear weapons. Nothing has ever happened.

Pakistan has a very large fundamentalist Muslim population, and its intelligence service actually assisted al Qaeda. It is a nuclear power, and nothing has ever happened.

Iran has every right to possess nuclear weapons to defend itself. It is almost surrounded by hostile powers, and it was attacked with no justification by Iraq, fighting a long and horrible war.

There is no reason, other than believing Israeli propaganda, to believe that Iran would attack Israel with nuclear weapons, absolutely none. It would be national suicide since Israel has deliberately built an arsenal roughly the size of Britain's for just this purpose.

Israel and the supporters of her excesses, like paranoid schizophrenics muttering madness on the street, keep insisting everyone near them is a threat.

Iraq was a threat. Syria is a threat. Lebanon is a threat. Iran is a threat. The Palestinians remaining in Israel are a threat (An Israeli Rabbi, head of an ultra-orthodox party, has called for their extermination).

The Palestinians around Israel are a threat (although what is "around" remains undefined since Israel refuses to define its borders and keeps taking the property of others). Europeans are a threat (a well-known Israeli military historian has threatened Europe with the reach of Israel's nuclear weapons).

Critics of Israel are a threat (they all get labeled anti-Semitic). In the U.S., supporters of Israel's excesses have variously advocated an American police state, torture, and, in one atrocious case, the legal murder of all family members of terrorists in Israel.

This has all gone beyond sanity and threatens to drag down the planet with Israel's obsessions. This is the real reason why there is no peace in the Middle East.